


did he deserve it?

by clickingkeyboards



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Character Death, Gen, Hazel Wong is a Private Detective, M/M, Murder Mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26883745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Private Detective Hazel Wong is contracted by the police to uncover the death of a Cambridge student seemingly without an enemy in the world.With her co-worker and closest ally assisting from afar, her main suspect being guarded by his fiercely protective brother, and the victim’s golden-haired sister less than pleased with her police affiliations, can Hazel Wong solve the case?And can she trust the police as she does so?
Relationships: Alexander Arcady & Hazel Wong, Bertie Wells & Daisy Wells, Daisy Wells & George Mukherjee, Daisy Wells & Hazel Wong, Harold Mukherjee/Bertie Wells
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WritesEveryBlueMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritesEveryBlueMoon/gifts).



The time of death was three in the morning and Cambridge was in mourning to match.

It was the sort of performative grief that, as a detective, I am used to. Everybody wanted to be seen as bereaved as possible in order to draw suspicion away from themselves and onto others that took classes at the university.

Because it was murder. It always is, when I am involved. While other private detectives allied with the police clamoured to seize hold of minor thefts, Priestly assured that I was assigned only the most interesting (and often disgusting) cases. I was both grateful and bitter about this as I strode out of Cambridge train station with a case file in my hands, hardly looking where I was going. Even though every other private detective takes their case files on their phones nowadays, I prefer paper tucked into a brown folder. It seems to be the only way that I can concentrate on the matter at hand.

The victim was an unassuming young scholar. Angry by several accounts but otherwise known as a delight to be around. He was sociable, a drinker, and the son of one of the most prominent old money families in Britain. His formal picture combined with his upper-class name made the case feel quite far away from any modern reality, as if the brutal murder of The Honourable Albert Wells was a mere fairytale.

As I walked, I considered the fact that everybody who gave testimony as to his demeanour, countenance, and associations at the college called his _Bertie_.

With my red pen, I scored through the first three words of his name and wrote _Bertie_ above them. It already felt much more like a tangible case, dealing with a real person rather than a cartoonish scholarly caricature.

* * *

The key suspect brought me to another college in Cambridge. I was relieved after the nightmare of a crime scene: I had never seen such vicious marks from fishing wire, nor such a violent bludgeoning with something that nobody could locate. The rug had probably once been white, and I was altogether far too overwhelmed to put any meaning behind things that were obvious once I had left the scene: Bertie’s room didn’t seem to match up with the descriptions given by various friends of his at the college.

Amanda Price, in her lengthy statement, said: _I don’t think that Bertie ever tidied in his life. When we were in our first year at Cambridge, he was in such fantastic disarray that he had me do his essays for him. That’s long behind us now, of course, as it’s our third year. His clothes were always a rumpled mess and his room was a tornado of chaos, and I honestly don’t know how Harold stood it._

It made me laugh when I read it on the train but, on my way to St. John’s College, it struck me as off that his room has been such a neat affair. As if somebody had been there before me.

I put that behind me when I reached the college, however, because I had a suspect to interrogate.

* * *

On the train, the case had seemed cut and dry. I had wondered why nobody had arrested the chief suspect. His motive was fierce jealousy and was backed up by passionate love letters. He hadn’t an alibi for the entire night but, according to the defeated policemen who had contributed to my case file, he had something far more powerful: a passionate defender.

Priestley has always called me a powerful interrogator and so I had that small bit of confidence as I knocked on the door. My small spur of belief had evaporated by the time that the door opened and a handsome young man stood before me, impeccably dressed with his phone in his hand and a furious set to his jaw. 

“My brother did not do it,” he barked before I could get out a word. “Haven’t you seen him? He’s distraught and destroyed by Bertie’s death, and he has an alibi that the police refuse to hear from him.”

I tried to peer around him and into the room, ignoring the tears threatening to leak out of the corners of my eyes. The only glimpse I caught of the room was a young man laid back on the sofa, breathing purposefully and rubbing his sleeves over his red eyes. A lump formed inside my throat.

At the door, the boy continued his tirade, “I thought that you’d at least understand that the case against him is because of this country’s foul policing system, being Chinese, but apparently not.”

With that, he pushed my foot out of the way with his own and slammed the door so hard that it rattled the pictures on the walls outside. 

* * *

Alexander was in Gloucestershire and refused to comment on the travesty of a case that he was detecting. According to him, every one of the Five suspects had ample opportunity and all seemed to have a motive, and he was ‘going to explode’ if he had to deal with one more female teacher flirting with him. _The only good thing about this case is the kids, honestly,_ his email from earlier that day had read. _They’re all an incredible help and so damn afraid about this murder and the secrets, but they’re bearing up to it._

“If you aren’t going to talk about the Hurst case, I’ll enlighten you on the Wells case,” I said to him over Facetime from my Cambridge hotel room. “It’s a damn nightmare.”

“Who’s the victim, again?” he asked, busily working over some papers with his phone propped up on a stack of books beside his laptop. 

“Bertie Wells.”

Alexander slammed his fist into his palm and swore. “Fuck! How did I not put that together sooner? If I hadn’t been so focused on the damn Hurst case…”

“What is it?” I asked, leaning forward to try and deduce the emotions on his pixelated face.

“You know George?”

“The criminal justice lawyer?” I had heard many tales of Alexander’s best friend; he was intent upon introducing us one day but Alexander and I had only been co-workers for a year and life kept getting in the way. 

“That’s the one. His brother is the main suspect in that case. This is what happens when your brain gets stuck in the secrets of damn schoolgirls.”

I paused, and it was as if wires suddenly connected in my brain. “Shit! Alexander, I’ll call you back. I need to go and check something out _right now_.”

I sat back in my chair, electrified. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. It all made sense at once: if anybody was to have been through Bertie’s room before the police arrived to ensure that there would be nothing to incriminate his supposedly innocent brother, it would be none other than the self-proclaimed opportunist, communist, and anti-police George Mukherjee.

* * *

Outside Maudlin College, there were flowers and photos and cards heaped against the grand front entrance, all bearing words of affection and grief alongside Bertie’s name. Unwilling to let myself be even more upset by the case than was necessary, I flung myself past the porter and to Staircase Nine, and puffed up the stairs faster than I would have liked. When I unlocked the door with the key that the police on the case had provided me with earlier that day, I was astonished to find somebody already there. 

“What are you doing in here?” I asked, aghast.

“Eating Bertie’s chocolates,” said the blonde girl crouched by the desk, bouncing to her feet and turning around. Her face was smudged with soot from the fireplace and her hands were covered in dirt, and there was all manner of muck caught underneath her fingernails. She sucked chocolate off of one finger and laughed at my expression. “I’m _joking_. I found them.”

“What are you _doing_ in here?” I hissed as best as I could, trying to sound like Miss Livedon, my no-nonsense boss at the agency.

“Detecting,” she said, tossing her messy golden hair over her shoulder. A wrinkle appeared at the top of her nose. “What are _you_ doing in here?”

I ignored her, and pretended that I was not shaking as I stared directly at a potential killer. Why else would somebody be so blatantly uprooting Bertie’s belongings and ferreting around in the fireplace? “What’s your name?”

Popping another chocolate in her mouth, she smiled charmingly at me and introduced herself. “Daisy Wells.”


	2. Chapter 2

Daisy Wells was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a little high strung.

I could not tell anybody, least of all her, what compelled me to follow up my condolences with agreeing to her saying, “Let me take you out for coffee. We must get you connected with this case.”

However, I had done it and was walking down a street in Cambridge with a freshened-up Daisy Wells who was turning her silver tongue on gawking students with their phones pointed in her direction. I was torn between cringing and laughing when she yelled, “GO AND FUCK YOURSELF,” at a particularly persistent young man with a camera pressing up against her.

She impressed me, but in the way that you are impressed by ghoulish performers and those with gruesome tricks up their sleeve. They are fascinating like art, but not something that you want to get near to. Except, somehow, I did.

* * *

“I can pay,” I told her the moment that we walked into Fitzbillies.

“Nonsense.” Daisy straightened her leather jacket and winked at me as we sat down at a table. I found myself quite unable to argue. “You know, what’s— oh, I suppose that I ought to ask. Do you mind if I talk about my brother?”

Shifting in my seat, trying to work out how to sit, position myself, behave, I managed to breathe, “No— no, go ahead.”

“What is  _ really _ irking me about Bertie’s murder is that— well, Bertie was boring. A typical scholarly type. He didn’t have enemies, though I’m sure he pissed people off. He’s dreadfully annoying that way. But the point is that none of those annoying  _ things _ would compel someone to choke him with fishing wire and bludgeon him to death with a length of drainpipe.”

She spoke in an incredibly pointed and matter-of-fact way, as if she wasn’t talking about her own brother’s death. It frightened and intrigued me all at once. I wanted to run from this strange and seemingly emotionless girl, and I wanted to drink tea with her for hours and know her every thought.

Then something else struck me. “Drainpipe?”

“Of course!” She barked a laugh and said, “Isn’t it obvious? A bit is missing from the drainage pipe running down the outside of Staircase Nine, and he had to have been hit with something rounded, smooth, and of a shiny quality. Oh— why don’t people ever see?”

Although rather offended by that comment, I kept a straight face and said, “I’ll take your word for it, Miss Wells.”

She snorted. “My name is Daisy.”

“Daisy.”

“ _ Hazel _ .” She said my name as if it were a spell, a challenge that she didn’t think I could rise to meet.

“So you don’t believe that it was—” I paused to look at my case file. “—Harold Mukherjee?”

As if the very suggestion offended her, she shook her head and spat her next words. “I’ve known Harold since I was seventeen. He’s— well, I’ve never been excellent with emotions, but he loved —  _ loves _ — Bertie more than he loves anybody else in the world.”

“It could be a bluff,” I protested and it, for some reason, sounded weak to my ears despite being perfectly plausible.

“Not likely.” Pinching the bridge of her nose, she said, “Hazel Wong, you don’t  _ understand _ . Look—” She took out her phone and started busily searching for something. “I can’t explain how enamoured they were with each other. For fuck’s sake, they got  _ engaged _ two weeks ago.”

The photo was sweet, much different from the serious picture printed inside my case file, and worlds away from the bloated and bloody corpse that I had crouched over that morning. Bertie and Harold both had their hands held aloft, displaying rings, and Harold was beaming ear-to-ear while Bertie kissed his cheek.

“Did your brother have a will?” I asked. It seemed the right thing to say, not letting the emotions get the best of me in the way that Miss Livedon often said that I was so prone to.

“He wasn’t  _ expecting _ his death and wrote one in preparation but— yes. We both have wills.  _ Both _ of us.” Daisy leant forward and fixed me with her blue gaze, daring me to disagree.

“Why? You’re hardly any older than me.”

Shrugging, she said, “I’m in a dangerous line of work, Hazel. I didn’t want my money mysteriously falling into my parents’ pockets if I were to die. I told Bertie and he decided to write one himself — our parents are horrors like that, and we wanted to be careful. I was eighteen at the time, so it was last year.”

I wondered what her line of work was; it sounded far more interesting than my own. “Did you ever see the will?”

Rolling her eyes, she said, “Of course, I helped him write it. He put my uncle in control of his monetary affairs, and myself and Harold in control of his belongings. His money was to largely be put away and donated to charity. He gave a pound to any greedy relatives wanting to complain that they were left out, and the rest was mostly divided between me and Harold. It was a decent amount, I suppose. Not a living or anything, though.”

“Could be a motive for Harold,” I said absently.

Daisy Wells slapped me.

The waitress finally arrived at our table and we both ordered, eating in frosty silence.

* * *

After several minutes, Daisy spoke. “My brother honestly hadn’t an enemy in the world. I’m not the disillusioned sister here: I’ve suspected him of murder before.” Seeing my astonished look, she glanced away with a chuckle. “ _ Fallingford _ , Hazel Wong. Who do you think solved it only to not be credited in the police report? Who solved the murder of the heiress Georgiana Daunt? The Melling Twins two years ago? Theodora Miller last December?” She settled back in her chair with a self-satisfied grin. “I am as much of a detective as you, Hazel Wong.”

I felt myself freeze up in astonishment. All the cases that I had admired for many years were suddenly close enough to reach out and touch. Daisy continued to talk. “My brother has one person who may want him dead, but he’s been behind bars for years. Even if he  _ wasn’t _ in prison, he would never murder someone in that fashion. Stephen Bampton kills people with arsenic.”

With that, she bit into a macaron and said, “Go on, eat up.”

I gladly did so. “What was your brother like?” I asked her delicately, biting into a salmon-paste sandwich.

“The problem with asking me that question, Hazel Wong, is that whatever I say will be used against me.” Stealing a chocolate macaron from my plate, she raised an eyebrow at me. “I have a question for you, if you don’t mind.”

With trepidation, I said, “Go on.”

“Do you honestly believe that it was Harold Mukherjee?”

I thought back to the sorrowful figure that I had glimpsed in his rooms, of how every account described his close and devoted and loving relationship with Bertie, and the photo that I had just seen. “No,” I admitted. “I don’t.”

“Then why do you persist with that line of thought?” she inquired as if she was genuinely curious.

“It’s the police’s theory.”

As one would with a slow child, she patiently smiled and said, “Try again.”

“The police are usually correct.”

It sounded flimsy even to me. 

“Because— I don’t know.”

With a rather wicked grin, Daisy learnt forward and said, “You’re learning, Hazel Wong.”


	3. Chapter 3

That evening, I learnt more about a murder victim than I ever had while working with the police. Daisy and I left Fitzbillies and sat on a secluded bench, and I collected motives. Not the sort that the officers on the case drew up based on baseless conclusions:  _ real  _ motives with basis behind them.

Harold Mukherjee was a loyal, intelligent, and caring boyfriend, not the cruel-hearted and vapid young man putting on a facade that the police had spoken of. “He would never do anything to hurt Bertie, even if he stopped loving him,” Daisy told me, staring out across the quiet park that we were sitting in. She was bathed in a soft light from a streetlamp a little way away and looked mournful, as if she had been struck in the chest by something dark. Half-silhouetted and golden, she looked like the picture of a grieving sister, only with an unusual fight in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

She shrugged, laughing brokenly and looking down at her shoes. “He raised me, you know? I’m… there are four years between us, but he acted as if it were forty. He would skip out on events to look after me, save up his pocket money to buy me books. He was my protector. Nothing could touch me, nothing in the world. He used to say that it was why I’m so daring. I think that he brought it upon himself, really. He defended me from the world for nineteen years and expected me not to be… invincible.”

“He sounds wonderful.”

A wrinkle appeared at the top of her nose as she shook her head and said, “He was an idiot. One of the… four people that I allow myself to care about. Look where it’s got me.”

“Who are the others?”

_ This is supposed to be an interrogation, _ I thought. It was a futile thing to entertain, the idea that I was suspecting her, as if I was not captured by Daisy Wells and the way that she led this investigation, following her head when it made sense for her to follow her heart. Her brother had just died, after all.

“My uncle and aunt. And… my girlfriend. Amina, her name is.” She had an odd smile on her face, a real and emotional glittering expression. “She’s beautiful, I love her to pieces.”

Fiddling with my pencil, I ignored my pitiful thoughts of Alexander’s pixellated face on my laptop screen, grinning and laughing and joking, and asked, “Where is she now?”

“Cairo. Her parents don’t want her to see me.” She rolled her eyes and adjusted her black jean jacket. Across the shoulder, ‘ACAB’ was sewn in white thread. “She’s fighting them, though. She’ll arrive here soon enough.”

After a moment of silence, Daisy made an offer. “I can take you to see Harold Mukherjee.”

Thinking of my failed attempt earlier, I said, “I think that I’ve already pissed off his brother.”

“Ah.” Daisy gave me a crooked smile. “George is protective of Harold. I… I can’t even imagine how he’s feeling. Harold and Bertie are both the sort of person who feels every emotion at ten times the level that everybody else does. His grief must be awful.”

“You’re his friend?” I asked, suddenly able to see the two of them fighting crime shoulder-to-shoulder.

“In a way.” She laughed, and it shook her shoulders. “We were introduced by our brothers when they started dating. We went ‘well, alright then’ and built a friendship on both being too into crimes. George does have a devoted best friend, though. That’s a friendship that I could never come between.”

“His best friend is my co-worker. We’re both private detectives.”

Pulling a face, Daisy remarked, “Well, it takes all sorts. Come on, let’s go and see Harold before it gets too late.”

She offered me a hand up from the bench, and I checked my phone as we walked to St. Johns to see a message from Alexander.  _ Sod the police on this case and the police in general. Who has the gall to call these idiots qualified? They are so insensitive to these poor girls. I need a drink. _

I laughed. “My friend agrees with the sentiment on your jacket.”

* * *

When the door to Harold Mukherjee’s room opened, it was accompanied by another flurry of much more pleasant words than before as George Mukherjee saw Daisy standing on the landing. “Oh, Daisy. Thank god, I thought that you were— you!” With furious dark eyes, he swung on me and took in a breath, ready to start shouting. “You’re the detective from earlier! For goodness sake, I told you to stick your suspicions of my brother up your—”

“George, she’s with me!” Daisy snapped, reaching out an arm to guard me. “Stop jumping to conclusions.”

Leaning against the doorframe and barring our entrance to his room, he pulled an unimpressed face. “You’re one to talk, Wells. Are you sure that we can trust her? She’s working with the police.”

Scoffing as if the very idea was ridiculous, Daisy said, “Oh, sure she is. But for money. Do you really think that I would have let her within a foot of me if she wasn’t willing to betray law and order?”

George looked unsure, and I saw at once who had fostered Alexander’s bitter distrust of the police.

“Do you really think that  _ Hazel Wong _ would trust to police wholeheartedly?”

He turned to me with an astonished expression. “You know, I really thought that I would recognise you when I met you in the flesh. Come in, but be quiet. Harold’s asleep.”

“How is your brother doing?” I asked in a whisper once we were sat around the coffee table with tea in our hands.

“Like the love of his life was just brutally murdered, and then the police came and shoved him against the wall while telling him exactly how Bertie died,” was George’s frank reply, curled up in the armchair with a mug in his hands. He was sharply dressed, in a rich shirt and smartly-ironed trousers, and I could only imagine how he would look stood beside Alexander. “Do you have any leads?”

“Three,” I admitted, and Daisy cast me an incredulous look.

“You didn’t mention these to me?” she said, sounding offended.

“One theory is that somebody wanted your brother to suffer, George. Another theory is that… that Bertie didn’t realise that he knew something, but he somehow had information that could destroy somebody if said to the wrong person, and he was killed to ensure his silence. I also thought that, maybe… the second that I heard your brother’s name, it made me think. I thought that perhaps it could be a ploy to draw your uncle to Cambridge.”

Seemingly trying her best not to look surprised, Daisy spluttered, “My uncle?”

“Felix Mountfitchet. He’s your uncle, isn’t he?”

As Daisy furiously denied it, I felt myself flush red. I looked at her blue eyes, golden hair, and strong features, and thought of what I had heard Priestley say that the government man himself talked of, and I knew that I was right.

“Fine.” Drinking the last of her tea, Daisy said, “He’s my uncle.”

I turned to find George Mukherjee smiling at me. “You are cleverer than I gave you credit for, Miss Wong.”


	4. Chapter 4

The next morning, I make my way back to Maudlin with a thermos flask of tea in my hand and Daisy Wells on my heels. In her arms is a bouquet of flowers and a letter (“Not from me,” she was keen to say when we met up. “They’re from Hetty and Mrs Doherty, our staff back at home.”) and on her face is a set scowl.

“How was your evening, Hazel?” she asks me cheerfully, while sticking up her middle finger at someone pointing a camera at her.

“Alright!” I reply, trying to match her cheer. “I spent most of it texting Alexander. He’s wrapping up his own nightmare of a case in Gloucestershire and then he’s coming here to assist me.”

“Lovely, maybe George will stop looking at you as if you’re Satan himself. Well, I suppose it’s Kali, for him.” After a pause, she turns to me and says, “He’s a Hindu. So is Harold.”

When we reach Maudlin, Daisy sets down the flowers and the letter from their staff where the makeshift memorial to Bertie has been set up. “The college contacted me about a permanent memorial plaque, wanted to know what to put on it,” she tells me while she’s crouched down. “They want to put ‘loving brother, friend, and son’. I asked for son to be amended to boyfriend, but they refused because the public assumption is that Harold is guilty.”

I swallow down the words ‘we don’t know that he isn’t guilty’ and apologise instead. “How’s your girlfriend?” I ask as she bids the porter good morning and we begin our walk across the quad. “Any luck getting back from Cairo yet?”

“She’s booked her tickets and packed a bag. She’s given up convincing them to let her come to the scene of a murder, so she’s just going to tell them as she’s leaving and hail a taxi to the airport as fast as she can.” The look on Daisy’s face is absolutely smitten, and I think ‘of course she likes rulebreakers’.

“That’s great! I’m glad she’ll be here. You… could use it, I think.”

She gives me an odd smile. “Thank you. She’ll be arguing with George all the while, of course — oh, don’t get me wrong, they’re friends. They’ve just got that sort of friendship where they bully each other.”

“Always wonderful.”

As we cross the quad, I spot some younger students coming towards us, carrying folders and books, obviously on their way to a lecture. 

“Hey, look here,” one of them says, tilting his phone to the others. “That old rhyme.”

Daisy turns and swears at them. “Say the word ‘sinner’ and I’ll knock you sideways.”

“Two murderous lovers. What bad luck,” one of them muses far too loudly.

Daisy practically  _ growls _ , and I grab her arm for fear of her starting a fight. “Interrogating murder suspects, remember?”

* * *

Alfred Cheng greets us amicably and invites us to sit down. “What can I do for you?” he asks, crossing his legs and oozing don’t-care confidence. I set my recording device on the table.

“We want to ask you about the murder of Bertie Wells,” I say, and I realise abruptly that Daisy and I are now a  _ we _ . “I heard that you’re the person who discovered the body.” As I talk, I remind myself that Alfred is the only suspect who saw the body, and that anybody else knowing these details except for Harold Mukherjee, who was told, is an admission of guilt or involvement.

“That’s right.”

Beneath my fingers is Alfred’s testimony from the previous day, bookended by those of Amanda Price and James Monmouth. The pads of my fingers favour a quote made out of Monmouth’s words.  _ As for the murder — I heard this awful half-scream, half-yell at just past seven this morning. I ran downstairs to find Alfred Cheng wrenching shut the door to Bertie’s rooms, yelling down at the staircase don for the key to lock it. When he noticed me, he shouted, “JAMES! CALL THE POLICE!” I’ve never seen him as rattled as he was then. _

I cannot imagine the man in front of us ‘rattled’, not even by a gruesome corpse.

“Well, we all know what it looked like,” Daisy says, steering the conversation away from that. “Did you have any communication with Bertie Wells or Harold Mukherjee the night of the murder?”

“Um… I had a friendly game of poker with Bertie and some of the others that night in the common room. He won a grand total of twenty-five quid, and boasted about it all evening.” He has a grin on his face that mirrors Daisy’s. From their expressions, I can tell that something like that is exactly in character for Bertie Wells. “I… uh… bid him goodnight along with the other lads and went to bed. And… I had a text conversation with Harold later on.”

“What was the context?”

Something flashes on Alfred’s face. We both see it.

“Nothing. Just… random nonsense, I think I sent him a stupid meme.”

_ He’s lying,  _ my subconscious tells me. Harold Mukherjee’s alibi of simply being too in love grows weaker under where my fingertips brush the casefile.

“Can I see your phone?”

“Eh, sure.” He reaches for it on the desk and unlocks it by tilting it towards his face, opening his messages to Harold and handing it to me. The words are bright and my eyes can’t focus but I notice something: the conversation mentions Bertie.  _ Are you two doing okay? _

When I look up again, Cheng’s face is painted white with fear while his cheeks colour red from guilt. “Thank you,” I say, trying not to let my suspicions show through in my voice. Is he protecting a killer? “Could you send screenshots of that  _ entire _ conversation to this number, please? Leave nothing out.”

We watch him as he does so. When I get the notification on my work phone, I thank him and put it into my bag. “That’s all for now, Mister Cheng, thank you for your cooperation.”

Daisy practically drags me from the room and shuts the door, leaving Alfred frozen in his seat. I’m still switching off my recording equipment when she says, “ _ Fuck _ . George is going to kill me.” She straightens herself out and her eyes are blazing blue. “We need to go and get Harold’s perspective on this,” she insists. “Surely he’s feeling well enough by  _ now _ .”

I carefully do not point out that grief is not done and dusted in a couple of days. Daisy knows that, and I would be cruel to say that she doesn’t. Instead, I nod and we begin the walk back to Johns, preparing interview questions in between idle chatter. I try not to think about the fact that I am responding to her comments about her girlfriend with anecdotes about Alexander. 

* * *

The door is opened by Harold instead of George, and I squeak in surprise. It’s the first time that we’ve ever met face-to-face, a grieved suspect and a detective. His face is as thin as George’s and he has the same thatches of black hair. However, George’s is neatly combed while Harold’s is longer and messier. He has bloodshot eyes and bruises on his knuckles, but he is dressed in a white shirt underneath a blue sweater with smart jeans, and he smiles at us when he sees us.

“ _ Daisy _ , it’s good to see you,” he says, and she steps right into his embrace while I stay on the landing, astonished. “God, I’m so sorry. You’re up and about quicker than me.”

“I dare say that you liked him more than I did,” she replies easily, squeezing him in her arms. “You know what I’m like when I’m stressed. Working until—”

“—until you drop,” he completes with a laugh. “At least it’s got you being functional. Can’t say the same for me.”

Daisy laughs and then directs Harold’s attention to me, and it takes all of my effort to not tense up. “Harold, meet Detective Hazel Wong. She’s… I’m helping her with the case,” Daisy introduces, and she clearly doesn’t enjoy saying it.

“You’re Alexander’s girl, aren’t you?” His eyes are bright with recognition as he shakes my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, are you aware that he bangs on about you something awful?”

I briefly lose the ability to speak, and I must be gaping like a fish out of water.

“Where’s George?” Daisy asks, in a tone that suggests she would not be too surprised if George materialised next to her as she spoke.

Harold gestures inside with a rueful expression on his face. “An officer from the police force came by this morning and interrogated him. It was hideous, George was kicking and yelling before he managed to bolt in the other direction. He’s not speaking now.”

“Oh! Heartless bastards, the lot of them,” she hisses, darting past him and into Harold’s rooms. “George?”

When I look away from her, Harold catches my eye and sees my clear confusion. I almost shiver when he smiles at me. “My brother is autistic, Detective Wong, and he goes non-verbal after stressful things like that. He doesn’t mind me telling people, especially as it’s rather awkward to explain when you can’t speak.”

“I don’t mind that at all. When will he be able to speak again?” I ask, reaching for the right thing to say.

“Who knows?” he says, shrugging as he holds the door open for me. “Do come in.”

* * *

George Mukherjee is sitting at one end of the sofa with a tangle wrapped around one hand and his phone in the other. Harold tells us that he’s texting Alexander, I ask him to say hello for me.

Daisy, in the middle of a debate with Harold about a book that they both read recently, nods at me to take my recording equipment out.

I warn the room at large that I’m recording and both of them fall silent. “This is an interview by Detective Hazel Wong with Harold Mukherjee, fiancé to the deceased.”

He flinches, as if the ring on his finger suddenly burns him. “I didn’t even get to say sorry.”

The words in my mouth are suddenly filled with static, charged by something fierce that turns into a lead that coils about my fingers, pulling me together. “Sorry?” I echo.

“Not for that!  _ Christ _ , not the murder. “ Harold buries his head in his hands. “We had a row, the night before he died. It was… idiotic, really, but Bertie gets —  _ got _ — fierce so quickly no matter what the argument was, and I’m no better. I defend myself into impossible corners during arguments, George knows that all too well. And… well, I know that they say not to sleep on arguments but we always do —  _ did _ . It kept our apologies more genuine, you know, if we thought about it and talked in over the next day, as opposed to just apologising for the sake of it. We rarely argued, I can probably count our arguments on one hand, but that’s always how we dealt with them.”

“So you didn’t apologise?” I ask, staring at him even as he looks down, avoiding my gaze.

“I didn’t storm off in a fit of pique if that’s what you’re thinking. We just didn’t come to a resolution, we weren’t angry at each other. I kissed him goodnight, promised that we’d talk it out tomorrow, and told him that I love him, as usual. He said it back, as usual. I kissed him again and left his rooms.” He closes his eyes, as if walking himself through his memories of a dead man. “On my way out of staircase nine, I checked my phone and I had a text from Alfred.”

Here it is: the context of the text messages, the context that Cheng had refused to give me for fear of implicating Harold. And here he is, volunteering it.

I decide to let him explain it, in case there are discrepancies between their stories, and Daisy’s look cast towards me tells me that she’s intending upon doing the same 

“He asked, ‘are you two doing okay?’ and I said — oh, I don’t know — something like, ‘yeah, something stupid as usual. No hard feelings, though’. Then… I walked about halfway to Johns, because I’m shit at texting and walking at the same time. I always walk into a lamppost or something equally stupid. I… stopped outside the library to return a book that Bertie had asked me to, before we argued.” For the first time, he looks up and locks eyes with me. However, I see ordinary pain in his dark eyes, the honest and raw sort that comes with an aching mistake. There is no murderous guilt there, and eyes are the windows to the soul — or so I believe.

Trying to seem as kind and unassuming as possible, because if it does not come across in my voice then he will insert his own emotions into the gap, I say, “Go on?”

“While I was doing that, I checked my phone again. Alfred sent me some stupid surreal meme and said that he knew it would sort itself out. I replied with thanks, I think, and I took a photo of a book I saw about climbing. Bertie always finds —  _ found _ — the author’s name funny, so it’s something of an inside joke now. He laughed in reply, and I put my phone away, walked the last ten minutes back to Johns, went to bed, and woke up to the police hammering at the door.”

It fits the messages entirely, except for one thing. Both Daisy and I remember it, I’m sure, the break between text bubbles signifying that some time had passed between the laughing message in response to some photo that hadn’t loaded, and… another, longer message, that I can’t quite remember. Taking out my work phone to look at what Cheng sent me would break the spell. I have to ask.

“But Alfred sent you another text after that, didn’t he?”

Frowning, Harold says, “No? If he did, I didn’t get it.”

George reaches for Harold bag and chucks it at him. He catches it heavily and takes his phone from one of the front pockets. “Cheers, bub.” He passes it across the coffee table to me. “Here. You can look through it at your leisure if it’ll help at all. My password is his birthday.” He nods towards George, who rolls his eyes and mouths, ‘Sap’. Harold pulls a face at him in response.

I look at the password pad for a moment, wondering what George’s birthday is. His lock screen is a photo of Bertie leaning up against some sort of statue with the night sky behind him. At the same time, Harold and Daisy say, “Thirteen, zero, nine, zero, one.”

I type it in and his phone springs open. From his personality and reputation to his rooms and his phone, Harold Mukherjee is clearly a man who holds those in his life dear. His home screen is a photo of him with his arms thrown around George from behind — he wears a blinding grin while George looks somewhere between amused and affronted. On his neatly-organised home screen, there’s a folder of apps called ‘bub’. Daisy leans over, clearly curious, and clicks on it. ‘Grid Player’ and ‘Sensory Magma’ are the two that stick out, as well as a couple of text interfaces and an app for creating sounds.

“Oh!” Daisy grins and points to the last one. “I have that one. It’s great.”

“Which app?” Harold asks, leaning over with a smile.

I try not to flinch away.  _ He might be a murderer _ .

“The sound one! I use it for stimming.”

George raises his hand in a gesture of ‘that’s mine’, and Harold nods. “George, for all his organisation, always forgets his phone wherever he goes. I put it down to the twenty different suit jackets that you’re always changing it between.” He sticks his tongue out in response, and Harold laughs.

Resolving to seize his phone as evidence and go through it later, I open the messages app.

The visible contacts are varied. At the bottom is a contact named ‘Ma’ with a yellow flower emoji beside it and the message, ‘Goodnight ♡’. Then there’s ‘Dad’ (the last text message was ‘I’m not surprised’), somebody called ‘Ella-Rose’ (a charming ‘hahaha go fuck yourself Harold’ is the last text), Amanda Price (‘Alexander Kerensky, thank me later’), and George, who is listed as ‘Bub’ (This is you [ducks.png]).

Then there’s Bertie, the last text sent after they argued. It reads, ‘Tea rooms tomorrow? I love you ♡.’ And, at the top, is Alfred Cheng.

“Well, you’re right,” Daisy says, leaning over as I open his texts from Alfred. “Watson?”

On Harold’s phone, the last message is Alfred laughing at the book. I reach for my work phone and open the photo file that Alfred Cheng sent me. The last message there is, ‘Look, I know it’s not my place to say shit, but are you two really doing okay? Bertie has been angrier than usual recently, even with you about. And you’re like fucking medicine to him. It probably isn’t anything to do with you but even if it isn’t, I hope you know what it is just so you can make him feel better. I’m gonna fuck off and get some sleep now, I’ll see you in our lecture tomorrow.’

Then I notice something. The last message is a separate, cropped screenshot because it didn’t all fit into one. At the top of the image, I can see the end of the writing that is below the message above, the laughing that he sent.  _ Delivered _ . It’s the smallest, most idiotic technological detail, and it makes me realise something. “He did send you another text! Only, it didn’t deliver.”

“The service is sh— shocking in this staircase, that’ll be why.”

Daisy and I chuckle at him censoring himself. “Is that so?” she asks, suddenly serious again, and I can tell that something has occurred to her.

“Yep. Did you see all the students hanging around on the steps in the quad? They’re all from my staircase, it’s the first place to sit with decent service.”

I understand Daisy at once. “Oh! Daisy!”

We look at each other, and something is sparkling between us. “Exactly!”

Harold Mukherjee is innocent.

The murderer took their phone on the scene. Amanda Price received a photo of a rusty coil of wire from an unknown number at past three in the morning. However, based on the data recovered from Bertie’s phone, it was smashed and the cameras destroyed by half-past two, meaning that it had to be from the killer’s. However, Harold couldn’t have taken his phone with him, as Alfred’s message still hasn’t come through.

_ Harold Mukherjee is innocent. _

“May I take your phone, for evidence?” I ask him, trying not to let my thoughts out of my mouth. “Have you contacted everyone who might be worried about you?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I’ve contacted them on other apps. Can I have my phone to send some messages? You know, to let my family and friends know that you’re taking it?”

“Of course.”

George catches my eyes as I pass it back and he mouths, ‘Thank you.’

“Are you feeling better?” I ask him.

He shrugs and see-saws his hand.

“Going non-verbal is always difficult,” Daisy says. “George manages it excellently but it’s still  _ coping _ .”

Trying to understand, I nod. George gestures to my thermos and Daisy translates in an amused tone. “Do you want him to fill it up with — what is it, George? — oh, hot chocolate?”

“That would be great! Thank you!”

I pass it to him and he leaves the room to do so. Just as he does, Harold offers out his phone. I put it inside a plastic evidence bag and put that into my handbag. “Thank you. I’ll get it back to you as soon as possible and nothing will be revealed to anybody but myself and the inspector that isn’t absolutely relevant to our investigation.”

“I trust you, thank you.” He gives me a jerky and watery half-smile. “Let me know if I can do anything else. It’s all that I can do to stop myself finding whoever did this to him and—” He realises that he’s talking to a police associate and freezes, a deer-in-headlights look on his face.

“You can say that you want to kill whoever did this, Hazel won’t hold it against you,” Daisy says seriously. I nod and try not to look amused.

George hands me my thermos flask and I thank him, and Daisy gestures for them to go over the other side of the room so that she can dump her deductions on him. I stand and face Harold, and I try to not let tears crack through my voice. “I can’t take away what happened to him, no matter how much I wish I could. But, if it’s any consolation at all, I believe that you’re an innocent man. You did not hurt him, and I will try and rush that through the official files as fast as possible to get you removed as a suspect.”

His eyes are sparkling with tears and a slight of hope. “Thank you.”


End file.
